A year after her ill-fated engagement to Jed Wyatt on “The Bachelorette,” Hannah Brown has revealed that she had doubts and faked a smile through the big moment.
In an Instagram post on Monday — exactly one year after Wyatt popped the question to Brown in Greece — the 25-year-old reflected on her engagement that would end weeks later after news broke that the singer-songwriter had a girlfriend back home.
“Ever look back on a memory and it feels like just yesterday… but also like a different life? Me too. Exactly a year ago today,” Brown captioned a photo of herself standing alone before the proposal.
“I remember that day. I don’t like staying there for too long, but I remember it really well. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this has all the makings to be the best day of my life…but gah, it doesn’t feel like I thought it would,'” she continued. “I didn’t have words (or maybe I just didn’t have the courage to say them?) but the pit in my stomach was screaming, ‘this ain’t it’ (funny how sometimes it’s the people around you that help you articulate your feelings better than you can). I could fake a smile but I couldn’t shake the doubt, and looking back, I know why. That ending was not easy, but it was necessary to get me here.”
During the finale that aired last July, Brown shared that two days after their engagement, Wyatt told her that he had been hanging out with a girl prior to the show, and when Brown asked if he had broken it off, he said yes. In June, the girl in question, Haley Stevens, did an interview with “People,” stating that she and Wyatt had been dating for four months and that he had told her he was doing the show for his music career, spurring Brown to dump him.
Though she didn’t get her happy ending on the show, the “Dancing with the Stars” champ can now value what that heartbreaking experience has taught her. “If I could go back and tell her something, I would whisper, ‘It’s going to be ok. You’re right, this ain’t it, but it’s the direction. So open up your hands, and let go of the control. Trust this process, it’s going to be worth it. Also, nice butt!” she wrote before sharing the advice with her fans.
“If you are reading this right now, wondering how to navigate a situation that feels so painful and so not what you wanted, maybe you’ll let me tell you what I would’ve told myself: Hold on. Keep moving. You’re going to make it. This ain’t it but what’s coming is so much better,” she said. “Sometimes you’ve gotta walk through the shadows to stand in the sun. And trust me, you’ll really appreciate the way it feels shining down on you, too.”
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